about
Dear Friend,
Welcome to YBCA and especially welcome to our newly redesigned website. We hope you will find the site as functional and easy to use as it is informative about who we are, what we do and why we do it.
In looking at the incredible diversity of art and programs that happens all year long here at YBCA, people often wonder what guides our thinking, our decision making, about the art of YBCA. The answer to that lies in our mission, vision and values statements, but the shorthand version goes like this.
As an institution, we are committed to placing contemporary art at the heart of community life. We believe that the art and artists of today matter, and not just to an enlightened few who “get it” but to anyone who is willing to engage the contemporary world in all of its complexities and confusions. Four important points derive from this organizational aim.
First, we are interested primarily in living artists and especially those whose work is pushing boundaries in both content and form. We seek those artists whose passion for engaging the contemporary world is as robust as our own and we seek those who are willing to take the risks necessary to challenge the status quo.
Second, we are completely committed to providing a platform for a diversity of voices, with a special emphasis on those that, for whatever reason, have been marginalized or exist outside the dominant cultural discourse. Often we find that these are the voices that are most provocative, the ones that challenge us to think differently about ourselves and our world.
Third, we intensely desire to place contemporary art at the heart of contemporary life. We really do believe that the experience of art is necessary to our daily existence; it is the humanistic quality of art as a language and as a practice that enriches all of our lives. Our goal is to do whatever we can to make this idea a reality.
Last, but by no means least, is our commitment to supporting Bay Area artists and placing them in dialogue with their counterparts nationally and internationally. In so doing we strengthen our own community and ensure that the unique voices of the Bay Area are part of a larger conversation that is occurring in the contemporary world.
YBCA is unlike any other arts center in the country. Much of the credit for that is due to the foresight of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and the community leaders who conceived of and built our stunning buildings and continue to support us to this day. But mostly we are unique for the confluence of people, art and ideas that comprise the heart of YBCA as surely as they comprise the heart of San Francisco and the Bay Area. We hope you agree and that you will find through this Web site multiple opportunities to engage with us in some of the most bold, daring, innovative and important art of our time.
Join us and experience life—amplified.
With anticipation,
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Kenneth J. Foster